FAMILY and friends of three schoolgirls got a live update on their Arctic adventures - despite being nearly 2,000 miles away.

Alex Purdie, Sonia Slaam and Roshni Valibhai, from Pleckgate High School in Blackburn, spoke to their parents, teachers and classmates from the North Pole, where they are currently enjoying a trip of a lifetime after winning a national competition.

Earlier this year the girls formed a team called Pleckgate-Go-Get-Us and entered Ice Edge, an environmental competition for schools to come up with ideas for solutions to global warming.

The team's idea of a carbon credit card won them a place on a 10-day trip to the Arctic Circle, and they flew from Heathrow to Svalbard, a group of Norwegian islands on the edge of the Arctic Circle, last Wednesday.

Yesterday, they spoke by satellite phone to a group of pupils, staff and family members at Pleckgate City Learning Centre.

The girls described what they have been doing, including a trip to Ny-Alesund where they were able to watch reindeer and arctic foxes and spotting a polar bear under a midnight sun.

Roshni, 14, said: "Seeing the polar bear in the wild is probably the most memorable thing we've seen. It was brilliant."

Alex, 15, said: "There are no cities. It's just islands and people who live here travel about in boats and ships."

Sonia, 15, said: "After staying in a hotel for a few nights, we've been sleeping in cabins on a boat on the ocean, which has been good!"

Robin Campbell, headteacher at Pleckgate, said: "We were due to have a live video link-up but there was a technical hitch so we did it by phone instead.

"We were able to chat for about 40 minutes and they're having an absolutely extraordinary time.

"In between the activities they've learned a lot about global warming from eminent scientists and they are really quite taken with the global issues at stake.

"We were very proud of the girls when they were chosen out of 2,000 entries as it was all their own idea and work."

The trio return on Saturday.